Gaming

220,000 PS3’s At UK Launch
Sony Computer Entertainment UK’s managing director, Ray Maguire, has put a figure on the number of PlayStation 3 machines (PS3) that will be available at its UK launch, on 23 March.
Towards the end of an interview with SPOnG (the Super Players On-line Gamebase), he revealed his estimation to be 220,000 units, with the hope of getting a few more units if, “he goes down on bended knee.”
His rough maths to get to this figure is based on one million units being delivered to Europe as a whole for launch, and the UK having a 22% slice of that, making it the single largest market in Europe.
Maguire was keen to point out that it will be the largest launch the games industry has had to date, “Probably over four times PlayStation One, and close to double the amount of PS2s. So, it’s going to be a logistical nightmare – that’s a lot of trucks to get around.”
PS3 fanboys will also be excited to hear that, “Product is already on its way, on ships, at the moment, and there is more being generated every single day.”
The other point of interest will be the confirmation that the UK price for the 60Gb will be £425, despite the wails from prospective UK owners. There will be no lesser model (20Gb) sold in the UK, as there are in other places around the world.
The success of the PS3 is not a done deal however. The xBox 360 has been selling well for over a year and the Nintendo Wii has done pretty well too. Our observations at the GameOn exhibition recently saw much of the public interest directed towards the Wii rather than the PS3.
1 February, 2007
Nintendo Wii _Does_ Get You Fit
Mickey DeLorenzo is a man on a mission – to prove that it’s possible to lose weight just by playing his Nintendo Wii.
He’s been the same weight for the last two years and while maintaining his normal diet, complete with the usual Christmas indulgences in food and drink, he managed to lose nine pounds and nearly 2% of his body fat by playing for 30 minutes a day.
He’s been pretty fastidious in his self-monitoring over the six week period, keeping a close eye on his Weight; Body Mass Index (BMI); Calories burned per session/per game; Body fat %; Heart Rate at rest; Wii Fitness Age; and Additional Notes/Soreness.
By his own description, he played it in a “semi-aggressive way.”
I moved my feet, I used full body motion, and I swung my arms to mimic the real thing. If you just stand there and make small moves or sit on the couch and play, I don’t think you’ll see much, if any results regarding exercise.
Oh the pain
It wasn’t without pain, but as they used to say in the 80s, no pain, no gain.
He got hit with two types of pain – physical pain as well as tech pain. On the physical pain side, he report that “my first 3-5 days were brutal. I was sore from shoulder to wrist, I even went as far as purchasing an Icy/Hot patch to sooth my pain.”
The tech pain was him smashing the screen off his girlfriend’s laptop during a game of Wii bowling. We suspect this accident then lead to further physical pain inflicted by his missus.
The details that he presents on the site are pretty extreme, with obligitory graphs too. Those things combined with the subject make it ideal Digg food, and as we write this, we see the article has been Dugg 3655 times.
I did a similar test with the Sony EyeToy a couple of years back, using Kung Fu that came with EyeToy Play. It really got me feeling good, but my appoach was _far_ less scientific. Reading this gives me the impetus to try it again.
Nintendo must be jubliant about this story – providing the perfect excuse for children to pester their parents to buy a Wii.
Hats off and well done Mickey.
19 January, 2007
Nintendo Rake In Record Sales
The Nintendo DS has emerged as the top selling gaming device in both the US and the UK during 2006.
According to figures from the NPD Group, the DS outsold the Wii and PlayStation 3 (PS3) over the bumper Christmas holiday period in the US, with 1.6 million Nintendo DS’s flying off the shelves during December, adding to a total sales figure of 9.2 million units.
By comparison, Sony’s much hyped PS3 only managed to sell 490,700 units in December, hindered by supply and production problems.
Americans certainly went waheey for the Wii, with 604,200 consoles shifted in December, backed up by brisk business for extra games.
NPD found that Wii owners bought three extra titles on average, with a huge 86 percent forking out for The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess.
Nintendo Owns Europe
Across the pond in Europe, Nintendo managed to shift 500,000 Wiis during December, while in the UK a hefty 200,000 of the next-gen consoles found themselves in the clammy excited hands of game-crazy Brits.
Despite the bumper sales, Wii’s still remain as rare as a Cardiff City away win, with Nintendo Europe MD Laurent Fischer admitting that the company is still “facing stock shortages.”
Record sales
According to UK market monitor Chart Track, UK consumers also bought more than 500,000 Nintendo DS handheld consoles, making it the UK’s biggest games machine last year.
With the Wii whipping up a sales storm and the DS registering record sales on both sides of the Atlantic, Nintendo look set to notch up their most successful financial year ever.
[From PC Advisor and Reg Hardware]
17 January, 2007
Second Life Going Open Source
Wow. Linden Labs, the owner, creator of online gaming smash Second Life have announced that they’ll be placing their front end software, The Viewer, under an open-source GPL license.

We think it’s a pretty brave move, which Linden Labs will lead to innovation in the front end – highly likely, given the passionate and highly technical nature of a large number of their players, or Residents, as they call them.
The move marks Linden Lab’s continued commitment to building the Second Life Grid as an open, extensible platform for development, rather than a closed proprietary system.
Linden Labs are right to recognise that their income comes from the $9.95 subscription fee, not the software that is used to access the ‘world.’
Going open source was inevitable and vital in the view of Linden Labs, as CTO Cory Ondrejka explained, “Open sourcing is the most important decision we’ve made in seven years of Second Life development. While it is clearly a bold step for us to proactively decide to open source our code, it is entirely in keeping with the community-creation approach of Second Life.”
Second Life’s open source code
Linden Labs blog entry
9 January, 2007
IGF: Independent Games Festival 2007
Moscone Center, San Francisco, CA
The CMP Game Group established the Independent Games Festival in 1998 to encourage innovation in game development and to recognize the best independent game developers. They saw how the Sundance Film Festival benefited the independent film community, and wanted to create a similar event for independent game developers.
The competition, now in its 9th year, awards a total of over $50,000 in prizes to deserving indie creators in Main Competition, Student Competition, and Mod Competition categories at the IGF Awards Ceremony, which will be held the evening of March 7, 2007 at the Moscone Center, San Francisco, CA, and is one of the highlights of the Game Developers Conference.
Link
4 January, 2007
Games Gone By: A history of video games – GameOn
Game On exhibition, Science Museum, London
Most people think that video gaming starting in the 1970s and 1980s with classic games such as Pong, Space Invaders and Pac-Man, but the real story of video games goes back even further. Come along and discover the machines, the people and true stories behind the birth of the games industry as speakers from the International Game Developers Association delve deep into gaming’s past.
Link
4 January, 2007
Video Games: Look of the future – GameOn
Our computers and consoles have an amazing amount of processing power, creating realistic lighting, textures and characters. How is this done and are there limits to what can be re-created on a screen? Discover, with Dr Chris Doran of Geomerics, what the games of the future will look like.
Held at the Science Museum.
Link
4 January, 2007
Xbox 360 outsells Wii And PS3 in US Over Xmas
It truly was a battle of the consoles this Christmas, with big-hitters Microsoft, Nintendo and Sony all looking to set the Yuletide cash tills ringing.

According to analysts at the US research firm NPD, Santa’s bags were mostly straining with Xbox 360’s over the festive period, closely followed by the Nintendo Wii, with the PS3 trailing in third place.
Preliminary findings from NPD revealed that the Xbox 360 outsold both the Wii and the PS3 in the US, with around 2 million Xbox 360s shifted between the start of November 2006 and Christmas.

Not far behind was the eagerly awaited Nintendo Wii which registered 1.8 million sales, while the PS3 could only muster a mere 750,000 Stateside sales.
According to NPD, these figures represent a huge leap from November’s figures which saw 511,000 Xbox 360s, 476,000 Wiis and 197,000 PS3s flying out of the stores.
It’s worth noting that Nintendo’s Wii didn’t launch in the US until 19th November – nearly three weeks behind the Xbox 360 – with the first batch of stock reported as selling out in hours.
It was a similar situation in the UK, with Nintendo Wii’s near-impossible to find in the shops (yes, we were looking too and someone’s still waiting for their Christmas present!).
One of PC World’s flagship stores in the West End told Digital Lifestyles that their consignment of Wii consoles went almost as soon as they came through the door, although we noted no shortage of XBox 360s in the store.
NPD is expected to release the complete figures for December later this month.
NPD
3 January, 2007
The European Wii Launch Reviewed
Last Thursday saw the launch of the Wii across Europe.
As we’d detected after we saw the demand to play it at the Eurogamer has got some great shots form the UK launch.
11 December, 2006
Halo 3 TV Ad Now Online. Watch It Here
There’s always a lot of interest around Halo, the signature game for the Xbox.
The original Halo sold a ton of Xboxes as it just looked so incredible and was a big step forward in gaming. Halo 2 received a huge amount of PR support and therefore created one heck of a buzz when it was released in 2006 with a grabbed by pirates before its launch. We found Halo 2 had improved but wasn’t the wow it had widely expected to be.
Two years later and the machine is grinding into action again to let the public know about the non-imminent arrival of Halo 3. It’s expected for release during the third quarter of 2007, and will, of course, run initially exclusively on Xbox 360.
The promotional video released last year at E3 got some attention, but there had been a lot of excitement about the next promo installment that was shown last night on US TV.
Thanks to some willing fellow/fellow-esses it’s hit YouTube, so those interested worldwide can watch it as well. Frankly it gets us no further forward in understanding what it’s about or how it will look, but for Halo fans that doesn’t really matter. Any further sightings of Master Chief are appreciated.
5 December, 2006